Second Half Of The 18th Century, View Of The Palatine Hill

Second half of the 18th century

View of the Palatine Hill

Oil on canvas, 50 x 58 cm

An oil painting on canvas, created in the second half of the 18th century, depicting a view of the Palatine Hill in Rome, with the imposing ruins of the Domus Severiana at its center. Clearly visible are the massive brick substructures that once supported the expansion commissioned by Septimius Severus at the end of the 2nd century AD, designed to extend the imperial residence beyond the natural boundaries of the hill, keeping it at the same level as the rest of the palace. The building, which despite its name was not a true domus but a southernof the Domus Augustana, appears here surrounded by lush vegetation, with trees and shrubs that have crept between the arches and the brickwork, now stripped of its original cladding. In the background, traces of the ancient imperial baths can be glimpsed—perhaps commissioned as early as the reign of Domitian and restored during the reign of Maxentius—which were once supplied by a branch of the Aqua Claudia. In the foreground, the artist has enlivened the scene with figures of travelers, horses, and dogs, in keeping with a typical convention of 18th-century landscape painting, where ancient ruins serve as a monumental backdrop for scenes of daily life.

The work is part of the artistic tradition associated with the Grand Tour, the educational journey that, between the 17th and 18th centuries, took young European aristocrats and intellectuals—particularly those from France and the United Kingdom—through Italy’s major cities of art. Rome, with its ancient ruins, was an essential stop on this itinerary, and travelers would often return home with paintings depicting the places they had visited—true artistic souvenirs that bore witness to their experiences while simultaneously fueling a taste for antiquity. Numerous French and English painters resided permanently in the capital during those years, focusing much of their work on producing cityscapes intended for this international market—often small in size and easily transportable. The same view of the Domus Severiana, moreover, also appears in watercolors by artists active in Rome during that period, such as Abraham Louis Ducros and William Pars, attesting to how much this corner of the Palatine Hill had become an iconic and recurring subject in the imagination of Grand Tour travelers.